Rampage after French family's jailed son denied funeral trip

PARIS (AP) — France's government is promising a crackdown after dozens of people from France's itinerant community known as Travelers set up a flaming roadblock and torched cars to protest a decision to deny a prison furlough for one of their members to attend a family funeral.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the government would respond firmly to those responsible for the damage in Moirans in the department of Isere.

Adele Vinterstein, the mother of both the young man killed in a car accident and the prison inmate, told iTele she simply wanted her son to be at his brother's funeral, scheduled for Wednesday.

No one was hurt in the rampage, which cut train service between the French cities of Lyon and Grenoble and left at least eight cars burned.